After the Flood

The most amazingly artful bucket of wet mud ever to be formulated and sold as perfume. Absolutely fulfills the brief and lives up to its name; sludgy, startling, and spectacular, on its own terms. But certainly not a mainstream pleaser or an easy wear! This is the smell of nature done right - and so unapologetically true to life it can be hard to compute as fragrance. Radiantly humid humus with roots and tendrils sprouting out all over, and maybe a bit of mould in the mix too - the sort of patchouli which evokes damp soil effortlessly. This does for the floodscape what Zoologist's original Bat did for caves: takes you right there, whether you dare or not. And in the right moment, it absolutely sings. (What IS the right moment, though? Maybe quiet or solitary times - not for sophisticated social gatherings or hot dates, but for those days when you really want to reconnect and get back in touch with mother earth, with your trousers rolled up to your knees or your skirt hitched up to avoid getting smirched. Honestly, this one's aura could quench a desert.) Sounds hostile, and it's definitely not trying to pretty anything up; but if you're in the mood to go squelching through real natural quagmire barefoot, it does that for your nose with extreme charisma and conviction. Apoteker Tepe's defiantly original, no-compromise character in action once more. And despite not being pretty, it has an honesty that's precious and even beautiful, if you keep an open mind. My taste doesn't run often to aquatics or greens and this is as watery and sap-heavy as it gets - and even I can appreciate it. As with Anabasis, it makes you perceive the smell of nature in a whole new way.

I definitely understand why some folks smell hints of chocolate in this fragrance because chocolate also often has sweet, milky floral notes. But to me, this fragrance is the smell of ozone, salty Pacific Northwest waves crashing against eroded rocks, foggy wet moss-covered soil. To me this is a great interpretation of the moment immediately following a heavy rain; although, I'm also severely biased as a huge fan of soil tincture fragrances. The hints of violet leaf and water lily combine with patchouli to soften this a bit and make it a tiny bit too powdery or musky for my taste, but overall I really do love and appreciate this fragrance.

Natural euphoria. After the Flood is the smell of nature's rebirth after a cleansing rain. You can smell new blooms, damp earth, fresh wind. There is a sweetness that runs through - probably from the water lily and violet leaf - that unifies the development from the first spritz to the drydown. The other notes develop and wane, as you experience being on the bank of a brook, overrun with wild growth, misty from a spring shower. This perfumer has an amazing ability to bring her vision to reality. This is so realistic that it is a concept fragrance with nothing remotely synthetic in the mix. Longevity all day, sillage moderate.

this has ruined me for other aquatic and faintly floral perfumes. on first usage, this was unpleasantly chemically to me, something underlying it almost like a doll's head, and i was faintly disappointed, but after giving it some time to age, the chemical tinge has gone down for me, and instead has this really intriguing wet, slightly bitter, faintly floral smell. astonishingly compelling in humid weather, but also suits a chill. i say it's ruined me because i can't get enough of "dark aquatic", as it describes itself, despite this not really to my knowledge being an actual perfume category. where are my dank girlies at

A deep, salty sea with inky and floral notes. In the drydown, metallic and alcoholic notes (reminiscent of industrial alcohol) also emerge. I’m not sure I pick up the mushroom note, but there is definitely a slightly dirty undertone. It feels like a late winter rain just as the flowers are about to bloom. Or an 18th-century watercolor portrait of a woman. A truly original marine scent; absolutely worth trying.

Does no one else get a heavy chocolate/cacao note right at the beginning? Not sure if that’s the soil, mushroom, and patchouli playing around or what, but it’s a heavenly robust “cacao” that I haven’t found in chocolate/cacao heavy fragrances. Lovely and complex scent. One of my faves of the Pineward/Apoteker lines.

This is SO lovely. I find that often, when perfumers use mushroom or fungal notes, they drown them with intense citrus and heavy florals. This fragrance lets the mushroom shine, while still keeping it light and fresh. Immediate and intense love.

Holladay Saltz has got a pretty unique voice. In this composition, Saltz is calling to my mind Francis Kurkdjian when he is at his best - which is unfortunately too infrequent. Kurkdjian has the ability to create shapes with his compositions, BR 540 - like it or not - is a great example (in terms of notes, Flood doesn't smell anything like BR 540, just to be clear). It's a very small genre I like to call geometric perfumes. After the Flood is one of the more interesting petrichor perfumes I've smelled in quite a while for its olfactive notes and also the shape they seem to take in the air. This perfume has a hyperboloid shape (asking forgiveness from math nerds reading this; I'm aware this is calculus, not geometry), smelling large and expansive at the top, then closes-in on its planar center very quickly, then lastly expanding again below the planar surface. Flood's opening notes of an extremely convincing water accord and mushroom accord is very striking. Watery notes are usually very iffy in the worst ways, especially when the vision calls for them to be overdosed as that usually means heaping amounts of sharp and shrieking calones get piled into the mix. Saltz has avoided this classic trap of the aquatic perfume, giving us instead of very smooth and fine mist that feels like clean, cool, standing rainwater instead of fetid blasts of swamp water. The mushroom note is beautiful, earthy and weightless. I honestly can't recall the last time - if ever - I've smelled this combination and particularly in such a convincing way. This watery expanse caves-in to an equally watery yet very tight white floral note that, before you can really register it, gives way completely to another large expanse of patchouli. Thankfully, this patchouli is not dank and peppery and abrasive. It's a clean and loamy topsoil that smells just as refreshing as it does earthy. There's one issue with this hyperboloid experience, and it's that it moves too quickly (err, rather, how flat it is). This progression of expanse, to tightness, to expanse happens in a matter of 2-3 hours, and is barely detectable on my skin at 3.5-4. If this is actually an EdP concentration, then something is wrong. Its behavior and longevity are far more akin to an EdC. For vision and originality, top marks indeed. The materials, iffy on their durability they might be, are superbly handled. I absolutely love what I'm smelling and the experience it brings my nose and mind's eye. If only I could enjoy the experience longer....

The opening is definitely where all the funk is – wet soil and decay. Very vegetal and realistic, like laying face down in the woods towards the end of spring when everything is damp and green and the plant matter is recycling itself back into the earth. Within the first few minutes the aquatic notes start to come through and, when combined with the wet decay scent, create this almost fruity note. It reminds me personally of how durian smells– kind of sweet and fruity, but in a way that’s rotten or overripe. That being said, if you hate the sound of this opening, just give the perfume a bit of time. Over the course of the first hour everything evens out into a more traditional aquatic fragrance. The water lily and violet leaf mix very pleasantly to the point where the scent becomes almost clean. Projection also goes WAY down in this time and the scent settles close to the skin. I’d say longevity on me is average but it’s hard to say for sure when the projection is so low. I went noseblind for a few hours before I could finally catch a whiff again. I tend to like challenging fragrances (especially wet, earthy ones) but given how tame the dry down is, I wouldn’t necessarily consider After the Flood to be challenging. I did really like this fragrance; but I wish that the opening lasted a bit longer or that the patchouli was strong enough to give the dry down a bit more earthiness. Other aquatic fragrances match the dry down just as well, if not better, than After the Flood even though the opening is unique.

After the Flood is meant to be a "rainy day" fragrance, and it's not quite what I imagined. It smells of wet mud, and then a rather delicate, sweet floral. It's really *very* floral; dewy fresh and swoony, in a clean modern way. It makes me think of "freesia" scents. A few minutes in I also get "damp tree trunk" or "wet moss" smell, which is quite beautiful. It's still balanced by that clean sweet "water lily" floral. And then underneath there's a chocolatey patchouli. But in the long run, the clean sweet floral wins. It's not a fashionable sort of scent these days -- it's a lot like L'Eau d'Issey -- but I do kind of like it. It's dewdrops and juicy petals and squeaky-clean innocence.

Very Unique. I got this as a few sample when ordering some pineward samples. The mushroom definitely comes through, and the soil notes were what I was looking for in the pineward scents in the first place. It's very well named, I got very little of the flower or leave notes, but just earthy rotting wood. Bonus points for not just making another citrus aquatic, or a rose and oud clone. Overall 6/10 Stillage (scents are weak on my skin) - 4/10 Longevity - 4 hours This definitely scratched an itch in what I was looking for. I just want a little bit more to soften up the earthy notes, and ideally something that lasts a bit longer. Give it a sample, do not blind buy.

Start - white chocolate smell mixed with crushed weedy stem juice and mushroom juice in a forest After a bit - dry plant juice smell, like wet dust mixed with mushroom air, with just a hint of crushed flower petal juice. Dry down - a faint sweet smell, 20% flower and 80% crushed flower petal. More wearable and interesting at this point Pretty good but too distinctive for daily wear, also comes across as a bit feminine to me. More juicy smelling than anabasis.

Well, this is some amazing alchemy - I've never smelled such a realistic earthy mushroom note. It does what it says on the bottle - it's the smell of damp soil in the woods after a thoroughly soaking rain. The mushroom is VERY strong up front and the earth notes come in later. Is it interesting? Hell yes. Is it something I want to smell on a person? Uh...in all honesty, not really. This is the smell of a place, not a living thing.

After the Flood opens with a dark very earthy note with a hint of sweetness and floral in the background. Strangely this dark earthy note fades almost entirely 45 minutes in. Leaving behind a slightly musk tinged floral scent with hints of violet and something green in it. Both parts are enjoyable but it’s a very strange 2-part fragrance. The first 45ish minutes and the rest of After the Floods life span are almost entirely opposite to each other. There are still slight hints of the earthiness that pop up occasionally but After the Flood becomes a predominantly floral fragrance. Perfomace wise After the Flood really impressed. Longevity wise it lasted almost 6 hours on my skin but only maybe 2 hours at max on my clothes. A 7/10 here. The projection wasn’t as good unfortunately, it never really became more than a skin scent. At the strongest rising maybe an inch off my skin, a 2/10. I’m really not quite sure what to make of After the Flood, to me it very much feels like two diametrically opposite fragrances combined into one. Unfortunately I find myself thinking more and more that the two parts that make After the Flood just don’t mix together, in the fragrance itself and less so scent wise. I think if the two sides had mixed together nicely if could’ve been a very interesting fragrance but without the mix After the Flood is slightly unpleasant in the opening and generally off not very enjoyable. A 3/10 overall, the idea is interesting but the balance is just to far off.

OMG this is something unholy, haunted and totally warped. i've always thought that the TRULY scary is when something beautiful is mixed with something that is not. the same with heartbreak and anything else like that. for example, dying on your way to your wedding is heartbreaking, whereas being run over by a bus when you're doing stage 4 chemo less so. okay, my examples are convoluted at the best of times, but this scent is a mix of these two; the fetid and the sublime. for me, the mix of vegetal, rotting matter and wonderful floral unnerves me. the smell of bile, faecal matter and vomit mixed in together is disgusting, but, throw in the jasmine into the mix and it becomes unholy. that's what this here is. it's moreso art than perfume. the fact that i can detect some white floral prettiness under this mess is a little offsetting. the fact that the earthy funk is muting the conventional notes throws me, and as such, this is hard to wear. it's okay to experience, but to wear is a tough ask.

Submerged green florals. I don't know what is giving this the aquatic vibes, but it's mixed with green notes, and florals, and it is SUCH a unique pairing, that I can't stop sniffing, and I GENUINELY do NOT like this! It's the kind of 'weird' I usually ask for, and when I get it, I usually respond with "Okay, not THAT weird!", but I'm glad I got it, even though I don't like it. I wish more perfumers made 'weird' scents like this -- even though I personally wouldn't go for it. I can totally get that mushroom vibe here, along with the violet leaf (which always came across as cold, mechanical and distant), but those two, paired with lily notes creates an AMAZING accord. This is a mood, I must say. A mood and a vibe, which, whilst unpleasant, does what perfume art like this is meant to do...

Not really feeling it. Up front I get a weird impression of Andes mints dipped in house paint. Then pretty quickly it settles into a not-unpleasant woodsy soil accord that sticks around for the duration. The drydown's definitely my favorite part. Not a love for me, but if uniqueness is the main thing you look for in a fragrance, this is probably worth a sample.

I like this! It's very wet and earthy. I'd say it's super wearable. It's equally fresh and earthy, reminding me of a clean elementary school hallway on a super rainy and muddy day after recess.

I think the patchouli overpowers the perfume for me. I like the earthiness but it comes off more like incense. I wanted more of the soil and mushroom notes.

super enamored by this fragrance!! but the loud squishy mushroom flavor is too prominent